Shawn Snyder has recently stolen all of the rock climbing anchors at the Meadowcamp Picnic area.

Top rope climbing (beginner climbing) has been enjoyed by many at Meadowcamp for almost 2 decades now. One person wants to put an end to that. 

This petition is being started to try to spark some kind of community calling to help raise awareness to the outright damage and vandalism being done to our communities' natural recreational areas. The sites being targeted are mainly local rock climbing areas around Bend and throughout Central Oregon. Shawn  is systematically going from one local climbing area to the next removing the anchoring hardware that is professionally set atop the rock formations, intentionally making the areas unsafe to climb at, or unclimbable all together. 

 

Now the first question everyone seems to ask is "why?" 

 

No one in this community seems to know that answer. Shawn will make statements of how he's "cleaning up areas" but what he's really doing is stealing metal hardware that was communally donated, or outright damaging metal hardware he can't remove by smashing it over with a hammer and leaving the remains for the next climber to deal with. I don't think any sane person would consider that cleaning by any reasonable standard. But again, only Shawn can truly answer that question.

 

What can be said though is that Mr. Snyder just finished up with a local court trial here in Bend, Oregon over an incident occurring at Smith Rock last year involving Shawn swinging a hammer at another local resident. Shawn was found guilty of felony counts and is currently banned from Smith Rock for 5 years, serving 5 years of probation, and has 4 active restraining orders put against him protecting community members here in Central Oregon. There is a lot of back story to that violent culmination, but in a nutshell, Shawn has been stealing from local climbing community members here and has been harassing them for well over a decade now. His reasonings of him "cleaning up areas" were him actually just stealing climbing gear at Smith Rock. 

 

Within the past 5 years or so though, Shawn really started spiraling. He's the guy who installed rebar ladders up some of the largest walls at Smith Rock a couple years back, again, in an attempt to "clean up the park." Him swinging a hammer at a long standing member of this community was what it finally took to get him banned from Smith Rock, effectively protecting all of its users for the foreseeable next 5 years. 

 

Unfortunately for all Central Oregon residents our local recreational areas that are not located on Smith Rock state property are not protected from Shawn's ill intentions. More of Shawn's threats have been received from community members recently stating he's going to be vandalizing other public outdoor recreational areas located on National Forest Lands in the near future. He has already removed anchor bolts at the Meadowcamp Recreational area located along the upper Deschutes River. He's also removed and smashed over bolts at a climbing area referred to as the Powerlines climbing area; also located on public lands that are located off of Skyliners Road in Bend, Oregon. 

 

I think the question everyone should be asking themselves right now is how is this very unstable man still terrorizing the community? 

 

Like most career criminals, Shawn knows the jurisdictional laws surrounding national lands and unfortunately a ruling on state park property has no ruling over National Forest land.    

 

This petition is an attempt to garner community support outside of our local climbing community. Every resident in Central Oregon and beyond should be made aware of this dangerous man. Our beloved recreational areas are now being threatened with violence and vandalism. Hopefully a large enough petition will help sway a judge to put a ruling in affect to ban Shawn Snyder from all public lands in Oregon. 

 

Located below is a video of an incident that occurred last year involving Shawn Snyder "cleaning up the park." He swung a hammer at another local resident after a verbal incident occurred, an attempt to stop Shawn from damaging rock climbs out at Smith Rock. The victim in the video tried smacking a phone out of Shawn's hand and Shawn thought it was then justified to try to strike the victim with a hammer.

Again, he was convicted of multiple felonies for this incident and is currently serving out a punishment that is still allowing him to continue his devious ways on National Forest land here in Central Oregon. (Viewer discretion is advised.)      

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4A1O27BTWg

 

Also below is a link to a story the Central Oregon Daily News just ran showcasing Shawn's intentions out at Meadowcamp. 

https://centraloregondaily.com/central-oregon-rock-climbing-bolts-removed/